rial leadership of America and Great Britain must disappear,
unless they can employ their activities in other forms of industry.
Those, therefore, who desire that the English-speaking countries should
maintain for many ages that high position which they now occupy, should
do all in their power to encourage a proper system of agriculture--the
one industry in which the fullest use can be made of natural resources
without diminishing the inheritance of future generations--the industry
"about which," Mr. James J. Hill emphatically declares, "all others
revolve, and by which future America shall stand or fall."

The third economic reason will hardly be disputed. Agricultural
prosperity is an important factor in financial stability. The
fluctuations of commerce depend largely on the good and bad harvests of
the world, but, as they do not coincide with them in time, their
violence is, on the whole, likely to be less in a nation where
agricultural and manufacturing interests balance each other, than in one
depending mainly or entirely on either. The small savings of numerous
farmers, amounting in the aggregate to very large sums, are a powerful
means of steadying the money market; they are not liable to the
vicissitudes nor attracted by the temptations which affect the larger
investors. They remain a permanent national resource, which, as the
experience of France proves, may be confidently drawn upon in time of
need. I have often thought that, were it not for the thrift and industry
of the French peasantry, financial crises would be as frequent in France
as political upheavals.

As regards the social aspect of rural neglect, I suggest that the city
may be more seriously concerned than is generally imagined for the
well-being of the country. One cannot but admire the civic pride with
which Americans contemplate their great centres of industry and
commerce, where, owing to the many and varied improvements, the townsman
of the future is expected to unite the physical health and longevity of
the Boeotian with the mental superiority of the Athenian. But we may
ask whether this somewhat optimistic forecast does not ignore one
important question. Has it been sufficiently considered how far the
moral and physical health of the modern city depends upon the constant
influx of fresh blood from the country, which has ever been the source
from which the town draws its best citizenship? You cannot keep on
indefinitely skimming the pan and h